Song: Spinning Around
Album: Light Years (2000)
As we arrive at this poll’s pole position, we must start at the very bottom, Kylie’s bottom that is. For as the video for “Spinning Around” begins, it’s a perky posterior we see first, peaking out from gold lamé hot pants. It takes a moment before we realize, this isn’t just any tush – it’s Kylie’s and she’s shaking it from hip to hip throughout a clip that might be just ordinary were it not for her moves. She’s flirty, she’s silly, she’s moving like she owns the room and most of all, she’s back! After a few years of less-dancefloor ready, and less commercially-successful material, “Spinning Around” became a comeback song for Min, shooting to the top of the charts around the world and launching a new phase in her career. Mind you, this was a woman in her 30s ruling club sound systems at a time when they were overrun with all those teenagers. Written by a cadre of songwriters including Paula Abdul and Kara DioGuardi, the song is about what it came to represent for Kylie: trading in your sorrows, finding a new direction, and oh yeah, spinning around! The vocoder and disco synth-string flourishes keep the track both fresh and classic, while Kylie lets loose vocally in ways we had not heard until this song. In concert, “Spinning Around” has taken on a few incarnations – from joyous and minimal encore during On A Night Like This to a Clockwork Orange-inspired funk number during KylieFever2002 to a disco circus during the Showgirl tour – each time as fresh and inspiring as the last. The video, the song itself, and the live renditions combine to let Kylie make magic with this song, re-igniting a dance club love affair and renewing the world’s faith in its greatest pop star.
Pluses: this song is perfection
Fusses: it can’t spin forever
Song: Can’t Get You Out Of My Head
Album: Fever (2001)
“La la la / la la lala la” has got to be the greatest chorus of any song of all time. While Light Years brought Kylie back to the disco, Fever brought her to the disco of the future, and “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head” brought that disco around the world. As her biggest hit ever, it reached number one in 15 countries and became her first Top 10 hit in the US in over a decade, “CGYOOMH” re-introduced Kylie to a new global audience who got to hear her casually seducitive “la la la’s” and see her provocative but always cheeky outfits. Penned by Cathy Dennis and Rob Davis, the song first made its debut during the On A Night Like This tour as a rather simple disco number. By the time it was recorded for the album, it had evolved into a pulsating, spacey, electro jam, worthy of the line “there’s a dark secret in me / don’t leave me locked in your heart.” The video premiered the robot dancers who would return throughout the Fever videos and tour, even appearing on the European VMAs in 2001 and the Brit Awards in 2002. It was at the latter where Kylie performed the now-classic mash-up of “CGYOOMH” with New Order’s “Blue Monday” for “Can’t Get Blue Monday Out Of My Head,” a tune that captured both the mash-up mania of the moment and the enduring relevance of both tunes. Sometimes an artist’s biggest hit is an exception to their style. For Kylie, it demonstrates the best of what she does while leaving you wanting more.
Pluses: this is the perfect song and the perfect performance
Fusses: why can’t every song be filled with la la la?
Song: I Should Be So Lucky
Album: Kylie (1988, single released 1987)
While “The Loco-Motion” was the first song from Kylie, “I Should Be So Lucky” was really the first original single Kylie the Pop Star, and what an introduction it is. Kylie is all wistful and dreamy about a love that she should be so lucky to have, while the key changes back and forth between verse and chorus. For those who thought this was a tune stuck in its Stock/Aitken/Waterman production, a stripped down, cabaret-esque production was premiered during the Intimate and Live tour of 1998, turning the one-time teeny bopping Aussie into a bona fide torch singer. This song captures much what is great about Kylie: she is capable of delivering a performance full of complicated emotions that in other artists would seem either contradictory or inauthentic. She’s both optimistic about the fantasies of “no complications / no hesitation” but also frustrated with her “heart that’s close to breaking.” And who can’t relate to that? Throughout what could be a whiny or dour tune, Kylie’s bright voice – and that candy-coated, krimped and bubbly video – we believe that we all should be so lucky, at least, someday.
Pluses: you can’t help but smile hearing this song
Fusses: you can’t help but cringe at some of those outfits
Song: Come Into My World
Album: Fever (2001, single released 2002)
As the fourth single from the massively successful Fever, “Come Into My World” should have been no big deal. But with a Michel Gondry-directed video, a Fischerspooner remix, and a stunning Metropolis-inspired live performance that opened her set during the Fever2002 tour, this song has become a Kylie classic. Oh, it also won Kylie her first Grammy for Best Dance Recording. Gondry’s video features an in-camera special effect where we see Kylie walk out of a shop on a Paris street, dropping her dry-cleaning. Then, as she walks around in a circle with an additional Kylie joining her in repetitive action each time she passes the starting point. Gondry plays with Min’s iconic status but also gives us our gal-pal Kylie rather than pin-up Kylie. The video matches the song’s circular patterns and layering of melodies over counter-melodies and lyrics that anatomize love in the most inviting way. While it was co-written by Cathy Dennis (co-writer of “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head”), this song could have been an album track were it not for a committed and enduring performance by its singer.
Pluses: these hands were meant to touch and feel you
Fusses: she so doesn’t pick up her own dry cleaning
Song: Slow
Album: Body Language (2003)
After two albums of galactic disco fever, Kylie takes things down a notch. “Slow” announced a more subtle approach to the dancefloor, and one of the most thoughtful and high-concept albums of her career. Co-written by Icelandic musician Emiliana Torrini, UK producer Dan Carey, and Kylie herself, the melody for the song is extracted from the bassline while small, almost microscopic sounds constitute the percussion. Vocally, “Slow,” allows Min to use a lower register of her voice that we hadn’t heard before, even as a euphonious team of falsetto soprano Kylies join the chorus. Set in Barcelona, the video is a thing of wonder unto itself. From the sculpted bodied-Spaniard’s back flip dive into a pool and the revelation of Kylie in a sheer beach dress amongst a sea of tanned, toned, and scantily clad sunbathers who are actually performing a synchronized sunbathing dance (mostly pelvic thrusts, truth be told), it’s hard to know where to focus your attention during this piece of eye (and of course ear) candy. Debuting at the top of the UK charts, “Slow” proved that Kylie and her audience could evolve without reinventing what she does best.
Pluses: Ms. Minogue lying amongst a selection of hard-bodied Spaniards
Fusses: that amount of sun exposure is not good for your skin
Song: Better The Devil You Know
Album: Rhythm of Love (1990)
There is one song that is played every Saturday night at half past midnight in London’s biggest gay club, G.A.Y., and that song is “Better The Devil You Know,” the first single from Kylie’s third album. On Rhythm of Love, Kylie tries to break away from the good girl image of her previous efforts, and with this song and its’ aerobic video she makes a good start. ”Say you won’t leave me no more / I’ll take you back again” the song opens after a pulsing beat kicks in and a chorus of “woa-oa’s.” Through the years those woa’s have made this song a true anthem. Still, what makes this song so enduring, is that beneath the bright S/A/W production and bare-midriff wind machine dancing, the lyrics are pretty dark: this is as close as Kylie comes to saying “don’t fuck with me,” and there are literally millions of fans around the world who would back her up on it too. There’s something enchanting about our Min taking this chance on a devil, so much so that when she sings it as the final number during her On A Night Like This tour in Sydney, it’s hard not to have tears of joys in your eyes.
Pluses: it really is better the devil you know
Fusses: she definitely deserves better than any devil, known or not